The ability to combine incoherent sources with attractive performances enable hardware integration issues to be resolved using stable, good quality off-the-shelf components. Some new generation imaging systems can be found in the mid-infrared (MIR). The most portable laser technology at this range, our Quantum Cascade Laser source can provide light power of around 2 W, industrial grade. With the Multi-plane Light Conversion technique and a modal approach, we present non-coherent beam combiner for QCL with optimal beam quality, demonstrating the state of the art in terms of M2.

High Power Diode Laser Bars serve as the foundation for many high-power laser systems used in manufacturing and research. Efficient heat removal is essential for reducing cost per watt by increasing available output power or extending the effective lifetime of these devices. In this paper we will introduce a novel method for electrically isolated water impingement cooling of high-power diode laser bars operating in the 975nm region. We will present results from 58 emitter diode laser bars operating in the 975nm region with CW output power levels exceeding 500W and a thermal resistivity of less than 0.12 K/W.

Industrial laser processes are innovative for specific tasks but not scalable to become the major material processing technology in industry. To overcome this limitation, the productivity and related laser power have to be scaled by combining several laser sources using compact beam combining and beam shaping optical systems that keep the resulting brightness on a high level using a compact opto-mechanical design to be compatible with existing machine concepts. The use of micro-optical systems for beam combining multi kilowatt laser sources is a new solution to bring the laser technology into new applications and industries.

New time-correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) applications, like non-line-of-sight imaging, require a new generation of single photon avalanche diodes (SPAD) characterized by an instrument response function (IRF) having not only a narrow peak (< 100 ps FWHM) but also a very fast tail (~75 ps decay time). With such devices it is thus possible to detect two optical pulses as close as 200 ps in time, even if the second one is 2 orders of magnitude weaker than the first one. Such secondary peaks in the TCSPC histogram, can also be caused by reflections from internal optical surfaces of the optoelectronic assembly in which SPADs are mounted and thus are consequently undesirable. Options to mitigate these reflections or reduce the time of flight inside the assembly while not compromising photon detection efficiencies over a wide wavelength range are discussed.

To make use of all advantages of diode laser sources in industry, telecom and consumer applications the characteristics of the emitters have to be transformed into the beam shape or mode distribution that give the best compatibility with the individual applications in compact, integrated devices and packages. The use of multi-functional optics with several optical elements in one building block gives maximum functionality per device. The use of anamorphic mode-matching optical components produced on wafer level made of glass or silicon is a new solution that can match optical and economic challenges with only micro-optical element.

Laser-line generators, known as Powell lenses are used in laser materials processing and optical metrology, among other applications. Powell lenses fan a collimated light beam in one direction in such a way that a linear rectangular distribution ("top hat") results in the far field. While such elements can be well analyzed and optimized with ray-optical calculations for long lines, the wave nature of the light has to be considered for short lines. Calculation methods based on both approaches are presented and it is investigated for which line lengths which method is suitable Relevant results for lenses produced by glass precision molding are presented.

We present the results of the new application of the Transverse chirp Bragg Grating (TCBG) for development of the linewidth tunable diode laser at 976 nm. The main advantage of this method is that a simple rotation of TCBG allows continuous tuning of emission linewidth with a maximum span determined by the chirp rate of the grating. Thus, the tunability range from several hundreds of picometer to several nanometers can be achieved.

Incoherent beam combination consists of superposing several laser beams on a target. This technique is relatively simple to implement and uses "off-the-shelf" optical components, without active control of the phase or polarization of the input sources. With the Multi-plane Light Conversion (MPLC) technique, tailored and multi-reflective phase element, enabling to obtain an optimal beam quality in terms of divergence for a given number of input beams, we present non-coherent beam combiner of 4 Fibered high power input beams at 1µm with a total M² close to 2,5 and a combining efficiency around 92%.